FREE ENERGY
Whether she's on the hunt for the right jeans or the right roles, Emma Roberts loves a good challenge.
The happy-go-lucky redhead straightening stacks of t-shirts at the Joe's Jeans boutique in New York City's Soho neighborhood doesn't know quite what to do with himself when Emma Roberts enters his orbit. He freezes comically as the actress digs through a pile of mildly distressed white skinnies, searching for her size. After what feels like a decade, he pulls himself together and beelines over to offer his services, flashing me a knowing grin. When he emerges from the stockroom seconds later, prize in tow, Roberts delivers one of her very famous and totally gratitude-filled smiles. His day: made.
In the spirit of NYLON’s annual Denim Issue, Roberts and I are spending a Sunday afternoon traipsing around town in search of a few good pairs. She’s dressed for the occasion: Alice + Olivia pleather leggings, a well-worn Rag & Bone button-up, a slouchy beanie from Topshop, and Isabel Marant high-tops. “It’s funny, because I was anti sneaker-wedge,” she explains after rattling off her fashion credits, running her hands through her hair, honey-hued to perfection by the Nine Zero One salon in Los Angeles. “I was like, ‘no.’ And then I bought them and honestly, I think I want to get another color.
I feel very guilty about it, but it needs to be done.”
We soldier on to the AG Adriano Goldschmied boutique across the street from NYLON HQ, and after securing some dark-wash skinnies for herself, Roberts eyes a Hawaiian-esque button-up for her boyfriend, the actor Evan Peters. “We first met at a dinner party, and then we worked together on a movie [Adult World], which we did not date during,” she insists, grinning slyly. “We didn’t get along, actually—he wouldn’t speak to me. But it turned out that we both liked each other, so months later, we started dating, which worked out for the best.”
Guy-wise, she gravitates toward honesty and humor. “I’ve been with people in the past who lie about what they’re doing or whom they’re with, and you always find out about it,” she explains. “I’ve grown up in a business where we’re taught to think that relationships don’t last, and that people are supposed to be married a bunch of times. But I come from the school of getting married once. Every relationship should be important. Everyone kind of rolls their eyes at me, but I still believe in the romantic movie outcome.”
As we walk through SoHo, smartphones are not-so-covertly aimed in her direction, ready to send photos, status updates, and tweets ricocheting through cyberspace. But Roberts is as undeterred by the citizen paparazzi as she is by the light, warm mist blanketing Lower Manhattan. “As much as I feel like a lot of things are tainted by Twitter and Instagram and all that, there’s the upside to everyone being connected in such a cool way,” she explains. “I’ll randomly look at Twitter and someone’s like, ‘Oh my God! I just walked by Emma Roberts!’ It’s so bizarre and cool. But then I went to Coachella and everyone was just on their phones the whole time. I’m like, ‘Can we all enjoy this and spend time together and stop taking pictures?’”
She should expect even more attention from the paparazzi, both citizen and professional, thanks to We’re the Millers, in which Roberts plays Casey, the proverbial runaway teen enlisted by small-time pot dealer David Burke (Jason Sudeikis), to pose as his daughter while he makes a drug run to Mexico. It’s a fun part for Roberts, whose image is mostly good-girl. “I can’t say I’m never going to mess up, but if I do, I’ll definitely be very sorry,” she deadpans. Sulky and wan is not Roberts’s usual shtick, and neither are the khaki shorts and pastel polo shirts that comprised her wardrobe. “I was so over those,” she recalls with a laugh. “But Casey was, finally, a role I could have fun with—be inappropriate, make jokes, curse. People said, ‘We had no idea you were funny!’ And I was like, ‘Oh, thanks. I guess.’”
Roberts spent three months filming in Wilmington, North Carolina, toiling alongside one of her idols, Jennifer Aniston, who plays a stripper posing as the matriarch of the fake family. According to We’re the Millers director Rawson Marshall Thurber, “When you point a camera at Emma and roll, you don’t want to look anywhere else.She could deliver a line half a dozen ways, all of which were funny. She takes the work very seriously, but she doesn’t take herself very seriously, which is a nice combination.”
Case in point: the pies. “I had my little life set up in North Carolina, and I learned how to make pies,” explains Roberts as we order a pizza and an artichoke salad at Gemma, a celeb-friendly Italian joint on the Bowery. “I brought them to work, and everyone would eat them, obviously. Then I’d go around, like, ‘How’s the pie? How’s the pie?’” Peach soon emerged as her specialty. “Jason said it was good, so it must have been, because I don’t think he would lie.”
When the food arrives, Roberts neatly divides the salad onto two separate plates. “I hate being that person—like, ‘I’m sick, don’t come near me!’ But I totally am very sick,” she apologizes. Curling up over a cup of tea, she occupies approximately one-eighth of our corner booth.
We’re the Millers is poised to be one of the summer’s biggest films, and it offers Roberts a chance to fine-tune her brand. “I mean, I’m sure everyone can say this, but a lot of people perceive me differently from how I actually am,” she says with a shrug. She has two challenges: She’s done some light fare, like Hotel for Dogs and Aquamarine, and she has a famous last name, which makes her easily dismissable.
But she’s managed to establish herself as a go-to girl for romantic comedies, and now, she’s eager to broaden her range. “I don’t want to be put in one pocket of Hollywood,” she says. Roberts will appear in the new season of Ryan Murphy’s American Horror Story: Coven, and she made an aggressive bid for a role in director Gia Coppola’s upcoming Palo Alto, based on a story collection by James Franco. “I’ve known Gia in passing forever, and I’ve always admired her fashion and loved her personality,” says Roberts, moving on to a slice of pizza. “I was like, ‘Gia, I have to be in your movie,’ but she basically ended up casting the movie with younger kids, and I was devastated.”
When one of the original cast members dropped out, however, Roberts was summoned, and a week later, shooting commenced. “And now with Palo Alto, people have been saying, ‘Oh my God, that’s such an amazing performance! I’ve never seen you like that.’ It’s so sweet, but it’s funny.” She smiles. “When you’re younger, you know, you start working on something because you feel like it’s the thing you should be working on. And then you get in a rut of not wanting to go to work. But I do my best when I’m excited to get up in the morning.”
Rashida Jones experienced this enthusiasm when casting her 2012 film, Celeste and Jesse Forever. “I immediately knew that she would elevate the part we wrote, which, as a writer, is the dream scenario,” she says. “Emma is whip smart, self-effacing, well-read, and hilarious. It’s rare to find someone her age who is so self-possessed and worldly. She’s a gem, and she can do anything she wants.”
Meanwhile, we’re back to shopping, and as Roberts plucks out the perfect white blouse from the dozens of styles on offer at the 7 For All Mankind store, it’s clear that she takes her wardrobe choices almost as seriously as her professional ones. “Every morning, it’s like, ‘Who do I want to be today?’” she says. “You can put on whichever persona you want.” She’s been working with stylists Emily Current and Meritt Elliott since she was a 14-year-old transitioning from the Nickelodeon show Unfabulous to her first starring role in a feature film, Nancy Drew. “She was a very, very bright girl,” recalls Elliott. “Every time we had a fitting, she’d come with a novel under her arm. She is still really hungry to learn about everything in the world, and she has no preconceptions.”
With fashion, Roberts was a quick study. “She always brought ideas to the table in terms of what she loves,” remembers Current. “She’s able to do Versace couture one day, and Topshop the next. She wears things that are accessible enough for her fans to emulate.” Diane von Furstenberg, who picked Roberts as her date to the Met Ball, was duly charmed. “Her strength and maturity are impressive,” she says. “We had fun, looking at everybody, joking and Instagramming.”
I notice a copy of Jon Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven peeking out of Roberts’s Zadig & Voltaire bag. “People think that when you’re making a movie, you’re just working, working, working,” she explains. “No one realizes that you’re sitting on your butt for hours and hours and hours and hours. I kind of had to take up a hobby.”
Roberts indulges her need for quiet time at the home she purchased a few years ago in Los Angeles, but she admits that her housekeeping skills need work. “People come over and go, ‘Oh! Did you just move in?’” she says with a grin. “My stuff is a mess. I had someone decorate my house and it went very wrong, to say the least. Now, it’s kind of half of what they did and half of me trying to fix it. And clothes everywhere. I am not neat. My closet looks like a sorority house in disarray.”
Despite Roberts’s very adult responsibilities, she still believes that youth is something to be relished. “I’m not really obsessed with wanting to be older and more mature,” she says. “I felt like more of a grown-up at 17 than I do at 22. I’ve been regressing a little bit: ‘Wait, help me! I’m not ready! Don’t make me go!’”
“But I’ve matured, definitely,” she continues, gathering her shopping bags and heading outside into the rain. “After the Met Ball, I went home to change my shoes, and I ended up getting in bed with my mom and ordering room service and falling asleep.” She pauses. “Does that make me a child or a grown-up?”